User-centered design

Summary

User-centered design (UCD) or user-driven development (UDD) is a framework of process (not restricted to interfaces or technologies) in which usability goals, user characteristics, environment, tasks and workflow of a product, service or process are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process. These tests are conducted with/without actual users during each stage of the process from requirements, pre-production models and post production, completing a circle of proof back to and ensuring that "development proceeds with the user as the center of focus." Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the designers of a product to understand intuitively the first-time users of their design experiences, and what each user's learning curve may look like. User-centered design is based on the understanding of a user, their demands, priorities and experiences and when used, is known to lead to an increased product usefulness and usability as it delivers satisfacti

Official source

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications

Related people

Related units

Related concepts

Related courses

Related lectures

Pictorial System Usability Scale (P-SUS): Developing an Instrument for Measuring Perceived Usability

Andreas Sonderegger

We have developed a pictorial multi-item scale, called P-SUS (Pictorial System Usability Scale), which aims to measure the perceived usability of mobile devices. The scale is based on the established verbal usability questionnaire SUS (System Usability Scale). A user-centred design process was employed to develop and refine its 10 pictorial items. The scale was tested in a first validation study (N=60) using student participants. Psychometric properties (convergent validity, criterion-related validity, sensitivity, and reliability), as well as the motivation to fill in the scale were assessed. The results indicated satisfactory convergent validity for about two-thirds of the items. Furthermore, strong correlations were obtained for the sum scores between verbal and pictorial SUS, and the pictorial scale was perceived as more motivating than the verbal questionnaire. The P-SUS represents a first attempt to provide a pictorial usability scale for the evaluation of (mobile) devices.

ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY2019

, ,

Generally, the environmental impacts of buildings are benchmarked per square meter as a functional unit. However, this practice prevents developing a user-centered approach in which performance is linked to real usage and not building size. Currently, the less a building is used, the lower the energy consumed during its use and, consequently, the impact per square meter, which does not make sense regarding both usability and environmental performance. Following user-centered design principles, the goal of the present research is to assess the environmental impact of buildings based on novel user-based functional units and to understand the environmental impact consequences of office occupation density. An experiment within the area of an academic office offered the opportunity to test the densification of working spaces and evaluate the resulting environmental and comfort impacts. In the end, the new user-based functional units highlight a reduction of all environmental indicators by almost 50 %. Also, the functional unit "eq-nominal people per effective presence" is introduced as most suitable to evaluate environmental performance according to real building usage, as a complement to square meter function units.

2020

The Pictorial Usability Inventory (PUI) is an image-based instrument that was designed for the assessment of perceived usability of smartphone apps. The aim was to provide users with an easy and intuitive access to the evaluation of perceived usability. PUI was developed in several iterations using a user-centred approach. The pictorial items were based on selected items of various standardized usability questionnaires. A pilot study with 83 participants was conducted online to test the psychometric properties of the newly developed instrument. The factor structure, reliability, convergent, divergent and criterion-related validity, and sensitivity of the instrument were evaluated. Furthermore, respondent motivation, questionnaire preference, and questionnaire completion time were assessed. Participants interacted first with a prototype of the app in which the product-inherent usability was manipulated on two levels. The manipulation was implemented using a between-subjects design. Afterwards, participants completed the PUI and further verbal instruments to evaluate usability, as well as further questionnaires to determine the different forms of validity. First results indicate good psychometric qualities of the scale and an increased motivation among participants when completing the questionnaire. Nevertheless, 60% of the participants preferred the verbal scales. In addition, questionnaire completion time was longer for verbal scales. Some ideas for the further development of the PUI are discussed.

Association for Computing Machinery2020